Mr. X riddles us more on papal infallibility.

am wor­ried about TurretinFan—known here as Mr. X. Nor­mal­ly, he is one of the abler crit­ics of the Catholic Church; apart from Dr.* James White—the man of many degrees, Th.D., D.Min., etc., etc.—Mr. X is prob­a­bly the most capa­ble mem­ber of “Team Apolo­gian!” and Dr.* White was cor­rect to praise “the con­sis­ten­cy of his work.” His ear­li­er cri­tiques (here and here) of two of my arti­cles on sola scrip­tura (here and here), though wrong­head­ed, were at least cogent. They at least made argu­ments that were seri­ous and schol­ar­ly and worth address­ing. But I am afraid some incon­sis­ten­cy has crept into the works, start­ing with this arti­cle of his on Pope John XX (which I addressed here), and now just yes­ter­day with this very strange addi­tion to his lat­est exam­i­na­tion of papal suc­ces­sion and infal­li­bil­i­ty. I frankly know not what to make of it. Is Mr. X mere­ly tired? Off his game? Have sea­son­al aller­gies been dulling his nor­mal sharp­ness? Is he get­ting des­per­ate for some­thing, any­thing, how­ev­er wild, to baf­fle the Church? I can’t fig­ure it out.

Let me take you, dear read­er, through the blog arti­cle so you can see what I mean. It’s titled “One Bad Argu­ment Against Roman Catholi­cism (With a Good Side Point).” Mr. X starts by exca­vat­ing this 2009 arti­cle from the Bal­ti­more Sun to the effect that Bene­dict XVI may have been a Nazi (as a mem­ber of the Hitler Youth). This is evi­dence, for Mr. X, of a false anti-Catholic claim.

the mystifying mr. x

On this point, we agree. The con­fus­ing part is why Mr. X would both­er at all. No one would accuse the scrib­blers at the Bal­ti­more Sun of being seri­ous apol­o­gists, and no seri­ous apol­o­gist says, “Well, you know, Bene­dict XVI was a Nazi, and so the Catholic Church is just rot­ten to the core.” Some kooks who claim to be Chris­t­ian (like this one) do, but no one con­fus­es them with seri­ous apol­o­gists either. Indeed, their rea­sons for being anti-Catholic are not apolo­getic ones: The Bal­ti­more Sun is sec­u­lar in its ori­en­ta­tion, and King James Only­ist Dr. Scott John­son of Con­tend­ing for Lies (he calls it Truth) is crazed.

So why Mr. X feels this to be nec­es­sary is a point on which I must con­fess con­fu­sion.

MR. X ARMS HIMSELF WITH A DISCLAIMER AND A CLICHE

Then, after three para­graphs devot­ed to knock­ing down an anti-Catholic claim that no seri­ous per­son makes, Mr. X comes to what he believes is a bet­ter argu­ment; it has to do with the fact that at one time Fr. Fed­eri­co Lom­bar­di felt the need to out­right deny Bene­dict XVI’s con­script­ed involve­ment in the Hitler Youth. Saith Mr. X:

Some­times those in Catholi­cism are so anx­ious to defend ‘the Church’ that they do not both­er to deal truth­ful­ly and hon­est­ly. … That issue is one that is much more ger­mane to the dis­tinc­tions between Rome and Gene­va.

The rea­son that this “dis­tinc­tion” is “more ger­mane,” accord­ing to Mr. X, seems to be that “Gene­va” puts its trust in a Bible that nev­er lies, where­as “Rome” puts its trust in the state­ments of men, who some­times do.

I can hard­ly believe that this is a state­ment Mr. X would make. He has stud­ied Church teach­ing on such mat­ters as papal infal­li­bil­i­ty and the author­i­ty of the Mag­is­teri­um for a long time; he has debat­ed these sub­jects with able Catholic apol­o­gists like William Albrecht. (You can find the papal infal­li­bil­i­ty debate with Mr. Albrecht on Mr. X’s YouTube chan­nel here.) Sure­ly Mr. X under­stands this top­ic deeply, but what he says about it in his lat­est blog arti­cle does not rise high­er than the lev­el of an igno­rant par­o­dy of what Catholics believe—the kind of par­o­dy you might hear from some­one who has picked up only a few scat­tered tid­bits from anti-Catholic ser­mons by folks like John MacArthur.

That men lie—even Catholics in high posi­tions of Church authority—is not a point any Catholic would dis­pute. Nei­ther would any Catholic dis­pute that peo­ple like Fr. Lom­bar­di may be either mis­in­formed or an incom­pe­tent spokesman, which Mr. X con­cedes might have been the case with his out­right denial of an aspect of the pope’s child­hood. Be that as it may, Mr. X adds a dis­claimer to the bot­tom of his post, but this dis­claimer does not con­tain a sin­gle sen­tence that any Catholic would dis­pute either. Here is the entire dis­claimer:

Rome’s teach­ing on infal­li­bil­i­ty does not state that papal spokes­men are infal­li­ble. In fact, it hard­ly teach­es that any­thing Rome sets forth is infal­li­ble. But you can trust every­thing the Bible teach­es.

That seems to be Mr. X’s real argu­ment, but to be hon­est it strikes me as innocu­ous and super­fi­cial. Nev­er have I seen a piece of writ­ing, that presents itself as argu­men­ta­tive, which con­tains, in its entire­ty, two self-evi­dent obser­va­tions and an innocu­ous the­sis state­ment in the form of a dis­claimer at the bot­tom of the text.

SHOULDN’T THE POPE TELL US WHY THE CHICKEN CROSSED THE ROAD?

The real nub would seem to be in the asser­tion that the Catholic Church “hard­ly teach­es that any­thing Rome sets forth is infal­li­ble.” Let me state this as sim­ply as I can: The pope, and those who teach in union with him, are infal­li­ble when they are speak­ing on points of divine rev­e­la­tion. It is nec­es­sary that this be the case in order that the puri­ty as well as the uni­ty of the Church be pre­served. And because this is the case, it was nec­es­sary for the Church (in Pas­tor Aeter­nus) to spec­i­fy the con­di­tions under which a state­ment of divine rev­e­la­tion is being made. Nec­es­sar­i­ly the Church must lim­it those con­di­tions.

Reformed apol­o­gists seem to have a con­sis­tent and bad habit of set­ting up false dichotomies, where­in if you reject sola scrip­tura, then nec­es­sar­i­ly every­thing that’s said must be a ques­tion of infal­li­ble divine rev­e­la­tion: It’s either just the Bible, or it’s every­thing. But the pur­pose of infal­li­bil­i­ty is to pre­serve the uni­ty and puri­ty of the Church, not to answer every ques­tion that can be asked. (For a clar­i­fi­ca­tion on one point of dis­tinc­tion between divine rev­e­la­tion and mere the­o­log­i­cal spec­u­la­tion, see my ear­li­er arti­cle on Lim­bo here.)

The real prob­lem with Mr. X’s blog arti­cle is that it pur­ports to be a dis­cus­sion of Catholic teach­ing on infal­li­bil­i­ty vs. the Reformed belief in sola scrip­tura, but the exam­ples that are giv­en—by Mr. X’s own admis­sion—have noth­ing to do with that top­ic. Admit­ting this, he con­cludes with the innocu­ous state­ment “you can trust every­thing the Bible says,” which no Catholic dis­putes and which is not incon­sis­tent with Church teach­ing on infal­li­bil­i­ty.

If it is incon­sis­tent, Mr. X does not explain why.